Cause Marketing the Happy Meal

Place your palm of you right hand face up. Now in a quick single motion move it towards your forehand. As your palm strikes your head make the universal sound of “why didn't I think of that” and say, ‘DOOH!’

McDonald’s, the 800-pound gorilla of fast food, has tied a donation from the sale of each Happy Meal to the Ronald McDonald House Charities.

No word from this ad in the June 28, issue of US Weekly magazine or from Happymeal.com how the donation mechanism works or what the donation amounts to.

But what could be more obvious?

Think of all this does for McDonald’s and RMHC. It gives the RMHC an automated and continuous funding source. Since McDonald’s has a pretty good handle on how many Happy Meals it sells every day, that means RMHC, can plan pretty accurately its annual donations.

And for the chain itself, it gives the Happy Meal a little more coverage from the do-gooders who want McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants to separate the toys from the kids meals so as to fight obesity.

This has to be a pressing concern for fast food restaurants in light of what happened in San Francisco on Tuesday, November 2. In a remarkable stroke of governmental nannyism San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted to ban restaurants from giving toys with any kids meal that doesn’t meet the city’s nutritional requirements.